And breathe … what a week! Many of you will be well aware that we had some more visitors in school this week. This time, they were from Ofsted, who joined us on Tuesday and Wednesday to carry out their inspection. I’m not allowed to share the outcome with you at this moment in time, that will have to wait until the report is formally published in January. It’s fair to say however, that we’re very pleased with the result and I’m looking forward to sharing the report with you. It’s prompted a timely reflection for me on my journey with New Bridge School as I’ve been here for nearly two years now. It has been, and continues to be, an immense pleasure for me to be part of the New Bridge team and it gives me a great deal of satisfaction to be able to play a role in its ongoing success alongside our inspirational staff. To explain why, I’d like to share with you with some incredible words from Chloe, one of our Autism Base staff, who, along with her her team, kindly shared them with me earlier this week. I think she sums up better than I can, just what makes New Bridge School so special. As she explains; we go over and above for our young people, we have a unique offer, we teach in unique and innovative ways, we recognise the strength we have together and that ‘teamwork makes the dream work’, we have amazing young people, we embrace new and exciting technology, we have a dedicated staff team who take immense pride in all they do and never fail to keep positive. It’s these ingredients that enable us to keep growing our success. Well said Chloe!

So, the inspectors came and went, but it was still business as usual across the school. Here’s what’s been going on this week in Miss Orgacki’s class..

This week KS3EOI have had a busy week getting into the Christmas Spirit! We kicked the week off by starting our new Advent book – Disney’s Countdown to Christmas. Every day until Christmas, we will be reading a new Disney story. So far, we have read about: Peter Pan, Snow White, the Toy Story gang, Alice in Wonderland and Donald Duck and we are so excited to see who we get to meet next!

We started making our own classroom Christmas Tree this week, we are using our handprints as branches and will be decorating it with lights, paper chains and a silver star on top. Wasi even ended up wearing some of the green paint!

We have also started reading another new book in our English lesson, The Crayon’s Christmas. Each crayon has sent us a letter asking us to help them with a specific task. The first letter we received was from the Peach Crayon, who was stuck in the North Pole! We had to work together to decide what she should wear to keep her warm in the snow. The second letter was from Silver Crayon who asked us to help him with his Christmas Decorations. We looked at the decorations and used lots of adjectives to describe what they looked and felt like. We wonder what the next letter will say!

In our Humanities sessions, we have been finding out about different Christmas celebrations around the world. This week we learnt about Christingles and discussed what each part represents. We then made our own. Once we had finished, we lit them and all talked about how we can bring light to others when they are feeling unhappy. Some of our suggestions were: making someone laugh, giving someone a cuddle and singing a song to cheer them up.

We also learnt about Saint Nicholas Day and incorporated it into our Maths sessions on prepositions. We used our knowledge of prepositions to find the chocolate coins that Saint Nicholas had left around our classroom!

Also, a special mention for Kaleem, Logan and Phoenix – who competed in the Table-Top Cricket Tournament on Thursday. They did an amazing job and were fantastic representatives for our form and the whole school. Well done boys, we are so proud of you!

We have had a fabulous first term and are looking forward to what the rest of the year brings. We hope you have a lovely weekend. KS3EOI

Mr Goup is very proud of Blake, Azeem, Nayem and Hamza who took part in a MangaHigh Maths competition and earnt enough points for a gold medal – well done!! As you can see, they were delighted to be presented with their medals yesterday..

I hope you all have a good week,

Gavin

Click here for this week’s news from Graham

You can find Dawn’s blog for the Learning Centre here

For news on our Key Stage 5 pathway groups at Medtia Square please click here

You can find my previous blog posts here